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Another legal effort to weaken teacher job protections through the courts has been dismissed, this time in the Garden State. On Wednesday afternoon, a New Jersey Superior Court judge tossed the latest case, ruling that the plaintiffs-six parents from Newark Public Schools-failed to prove that seniority-based layoffs harmed their students.
Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), a national education reform group that aims to challenge teacher job protections across the country, funded the New Jersey lawsuit. Originally filed in November, the case marked the third time PEJ has gone after tenure provisions. Their first case filed in New York in 2014, is currently before the state Supreme Court. In October, a Minnesota district judge dismissed PEJ's second suit, filed there in 2016. That case has since been appealed.
A 2012 California lawsuit, the country's first legal attempt to challenge teacher job protections, inspired PEJ's litigation. Lawyers in that high-profile case, Vergara v. California, argued that the rules that help keep ineffective teachers in the classroom violated the equal protection clause of the state's constitution. The problem, the attorneys argued, was even more serious given that poor and minority students are disproportionately likely to attend schools with bad teachers.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2014, finding that five long-standing teacher job protections, including a two-year probationary period for new teachers and a layoff system based on how many years one's been teaching, violated students' constitutional right to an equal education.
However, in a unanimous 2016 decision, a three-judge panel on California's Court of Appeals struck down the lower court ruling and the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
These decisions have not deterred PEJ leaders. But their other Vergara-style lawsuits have run into similar legal hurdles-namely, the plaintiffs have failed to prove that teacher tenure and seniority directly cause the problems that the plaintiffs say exist.
The California appeals court judges concluded that the plaintiffs "failed to establish that the challenged statutes violate equal protection, primarily because they did not show that the statutes inevitably cause a certain group of students to receive an education inferior to the education received by other students."
Likewise in Minnesota, the district judge said that the plaintiffs failed to establish that they had been harmed in any way by the statutes, but even if they had, "because Plaintiffs' alleged harms are not fairly traceable to the teacher tenure and the continuing contract provisions they challenge, a decision by the Court to strike those laws would not redress the harms."
In the New Jersey case, the judge said that she does not "see any link other than speculation and conjecture between the LIFO statute and the denial of a thorough and efficient education to these twelve children."
It is not yet clear whether the Newark plaintiffs will appeal Wednesday's decision. Naomi Nix, a journalist with the education news website, The 74, reported that a lawyer for the plaintiffs said they may appeal the dismissal or replead the case.
"We are very pleased that the judge saw through this transparent attempt to undermine New Jersey's seniority statute by making false claims and denigrating Newark's dedicated educators," said New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) President Wendell Steinhauer, in a statement. The NJEA, along with the American Federation of Teachers, had filed a motion to dismiss the suit.
David Sciarra, the executive director of the New Jersey-based Education Law Center, a legal advocacy organization, told The American Prospect that Newark's State Superintendent Chris Cerf supported the plaintiffs in the case, claiming that state law tied his hands when cutting the district's budget. "This is a huge distraction," Sciarra argues. "Newark students don't need more layoffs. They need Mr. Cerf to stand up and call on Governor Chris Christie to increase state funding so Newark can hire back the hundreds of teachers and support staff lost over past five years."
